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Wine Blog By Jack Scott
Tue, 15 May 2012
NEWS FLASH – Jascots short listed for ON-TRADE SUPPLIER OF THE YEAR The Drinks Business awards 2012
Jascots short listed for ON-TRADE SUPPLIER OF THE YEAR – The Drinks Business awards 2012 Judges took into account the recommendation and...
Mon, 14 May 2012
Blog readers will recall the great occasion last autumn when we staged a completely blind tasting of Grandes Marques Champagnes against our Palmer...
Saturday 29th October 2011
Jascots featured in The Times selection of Winter Warmers...
Winter's the perfect excuse for a cockle-warming glass of the finest, most perfumed, plummy port that you can afford.
Having tasted a trio of the unfinished, precocious, but potentially great, purple-black 2011 vintage port howitzer, I agree with Paul Symington, responsible for Warre's, Graham's and Dow's, that:
"You would have to be a damn idiot not to make a great vintage port in 2011."
The only problem with vintage port, made from a clutch of top port quintas, or estates, is that it takes decades to mature. Even less-revered years will set you back somewhere between £65-£100 a bottle. In these straitened times, single quinta ports and ready to drink in half the time - look the ideal winter tipple.
Single quinta ports are made in precisely the same way as vintage ports, spending two years in oak casks before spending the rest of the time maturing in the bottle. Just like vintage ports, with time, single quinta ports throw a crusty sediment and need to be carefully decanted before drinking to ensure a star-bright glass of fruity, not flattened, port. Don't fuss about a cut-crystal decanter, all you need is to pour the port slowly and steadily into a jug, with a bright light arranged under the neck of the bottle, so that you can stop as soon as the first flecks of sediment appear.
The gigantic, schistous rock and granite canyon that is the Douro is the largest area of mountain vineyard in the world and one of the toughest viticultural environments, with very cold winters and very hot summers. Mostly, apart from vines, no other crop survives. Average yields here are tiny, at about 33 hectolitres a hectare, with older vine producing about half of that. Other European vineyards, such as those in Germany and Champagne, can produce as much as 100 hectolitres or more per hectare.
With duty increases and the buyer's own-brand ports rising to unpalatable price levels, it's upsetting to note that port sales are still falling.
2010 Pouilly-Fumé, Domaine Tinel-Blondelet, Loire, France
Jascots £14.20
Annick Tinel-Blondelet is the sixth generation of her family to make wine on some of the best soils in Sancerre and Pouilly. including this Pouilly-Fumé,it may seem odd to tuck a squeaky sauvignon away for a year or two but that is precisely what I would do with this fragrant, light, leafy lemony Pouilly-Fumé. With just a few years of bottle age, this delicate Sauvignon will fatten up with a layer of rich, buttery, verdant fruit that will be worth the wait.
